There is no explicit mechanism, such as float(integer), in the Korn Shell (ksh93) to convert an integer to a float which in the Korn Shell is by default a long double. By default, dividing integer 1 by 3 produces 0: $ integer x=1 $ echo $(( x/3 )) 0 $ So how to you get the result, 0.3333 …, which you probably were expecting? You can convert x to floating point and then do the division by replacing the 3 with either 3. or, as I normally do, with 3.0: $ integer x=1 $ echo $(( x/3. )) 0.333333333333333333 $